Clarice's Nightmare
by Brightblaze
Summary: Stressed people usually have disturbed sleep, and Clarice Starling is one very stressed-out person. She's got a suffering job, horrible surperiors, and a secret. ((Note: I've decided to make this a multi-chapter story! Come and take a peek!))
1. Chapter 1

Clarice's Nightmare

**My first horror that I'm publishing, please tell me what you think of it! I don't own anything but this one fanfic. And please be aware, content may be disturbing to some people. **

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As with most dreams, Clarice Starling just so much as randomly 'poofed' into her scenario.

Her gaze scooped the smallest details- her stomach cramping, the shadows blending, the digital clock reading 2:36.

Goosebumps already blazed over her arms. Naked arms. Starling's dream had stripped her of any garments. The air wrapped around her slender body and shook it. An undefined hiss was scraping in her ears- it was ever so slightly familiar. The air had a slow, surreal feel, her eyes sweeping over her closet, window, door, desk, and bed in slow motion. She was standing in her room and her belly was swollen.

Clarice lurched forward at the sudden weight in her gut, feeling what felt like giant maggots swimming inside of her. She blindly grabbed at her desk beside her, but it was gone. She fell to the ground and clutched her stomach. It felt like a boulder. It was larger than the average nine-months-pregnant stomach.

She groaned at the intense cramping in her gut. The occasional thump from inside jarred her aching skin and made her feel like she was indeed in labor. The things inside her seemed to be squirming in her lower abdomen and she felt a horrible, swelling pressure burn inside her... birthing canal?

_'What the fuck is going on?!'_ The sour taste of icy confusion and terror battered her. She rubbed her tummy and felt the vibrations. Her muscles were beginning to contract and push; rubbing her stomach didn't soothe the pain inside.

The sound got louder, a hot, hissing sound. Something was outside her door.

Clarice squeezed her eyes shut and screamed, blocking out the sound. It escalated to a cry of agony. Her legs flopped and kicked against the pushing feeling inside of her.

A warm, wet feeling released from between her legs. It felt like a gush of menstrual blood. Her labia flexed agonizingly. The 'things' wanted out.

Clarice arched her back like a dead frog's leg hooked to electricity. She was writhing on her back as the fluids oozed from her pubic area, onto the soaked floor and lapped at her thighs. Her vagina was expanding and it was Hell burning through her abdomen.

The woman shredded her vocal cords in her wailings. She clamped her mouth shut and sliced her lip with her front teeth. Thick blood slithered down her chin. Clarice was crying, she was clawing trenches in the carpet, and her heels drummed on the bloody floor. They were in time with the hissing outside her door.

She could barely breathe from the pain. The muscles in her lower half were furiously trying to expel the parasitic prisoners that made her stomach swell. She sobbed and raised her head, only to slam it back down onto the floor. She had never felt so much agony before in her life.

The pain was surreal, so it was almost dulled, but not quite. She could feel the sting on her bottom lip, and the torturing waves of terror and pain crashing through her. She could feel the creatures inside her fighting through the fleshy tunnel, _punching _through, sending out slimy bursts of crimson fluid out before them.

Clarice's throat convulsed in terror when the door creaked open.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter stepped inside.

He wasn't the quiet, smooth-talking character that she knew. This was a horrible, snarling monster and it stood in the doorway with prison garments stained with fresh blood. Red foam gathered at his gray lips and his eyes... his eyes... the whites were as bright as maggots and the pupils were deranged. Two dots of black blood on newly fallen snow. The irises were nearly invisible, but Clarice's jaded mind fancied that the dark gray-ish maroon shadows ringing his pupils could have been the irises.

'Clarice,' it was the same voice and it sounded viciously wrong coming from the beast standing before her. 'You're in quite the situation, aren't you?' Slightly amused, condescending, a grin masked behind the sharp blades of teeth.

The rockets of pain and pressure forcing her opening vagina amplified suddenly, causing her eyes to bug like a fish's. She screamed and drove her fingernails farther into the scatchy fabric, which felt like a bed of needles.

Clarice felt sick and vulnerable lying in a puddle of sweat and blood, naked, displaying herself like a whore would. The tears blurred her eyes and clogged her throat, but she managed to rasp, 'D-doc...hel...'

He snapped at her, clashing his monstrous jaws together with an ugly _clack. '_Who's are they?!' he roared, balling his hands into fists. 'What happened?!'

'I don't know!' the woman sobbed. 'Oh God, oh God!' Clarice desperately tried to squeeze her legs together to shield the mess of her pelvis, but her muscles flamed like the wave of heat that slaps ones eyes when they get too close to a fire. She attempted to raise her arms over her chest. The carpet, however, stuck to her arms and it dawned on her like acid rain that she was indeed immobolized.

Hannibal grinned down at the distressed girl, but his eyes glared brambles. 'I can see one,' he said.

Clarice's high-pitched gasp quickly followed. She moaned in relief as the pressure in her vagina released one of the infants. She felt the gooey creature squirm between her thighs. It felt like a large, cold slug.

Another one popped out soon after, wailing. The sounds of two crying infants sounded bells in the woman's mind, who raised her head to see them. She only managed a glimpse of bloody white blobs before the final child forced itself through her birthing canal. Clarice howled and slammed her head back into the carpet. The pain had blared one last time.

Crying was all she could hear. Her loins were beginning to slowly relax and her body had stopped contracting and jerking. She could see her chest's heaving beginning to slow down.

Dr. Lecter came forward. His face appeared to be a mask, one emotional expression pasted on. Emotional to a fault, so much emotion that it appeared emotionless. The blatant, fiery stare of an owl is what came to her mind.

His pale red eyes slithered over her body. The splayed, damp hair to her aghast face, over her breasts and down to all the blood and slime, resting upon her children which curled in her frozen, pale legs.

'It's cliche, Clarice. I was hoping that we would avoid this. Children? Tsk, it's dull and to be frank, I cannot think of any reason why anyone would want to see you like this. Why are you letting me here, why haven't you sent me away? Oh, and close your legs, darling.'

She couldn't. Starling physically could not move. She cowered as best she could when he bent down and touched the infants. Her skin crawled.

He lifted one. 'Handsome fellow. He looks a lot like you.'

It was wriggling and mewling in Dr. Lecter's cold fist. Shreds of placenta and blobs of gore oozed off and landed on her legs with a _plop. _

No bigger than a kitten, Clarice's first child was a lamb.

Clarice was simply stunned at her fleecy-white, cloven-hoofed, cotton-tailed baby. It was wailing like a loon.

Hannibal's eyes sparked like flint as his jaws closed around the lamb's skull and crushed it, severing bone and spraying scarlet. The limbs of the lamb still twisted and writhed as the creature's nervous system fought for life. Even without its head.

Hannibal gently tossed the corpse to Clarice and it landed on her breast. Blood gushed like floodwater down onto her throat from it's gaping neck.

Clarice was hyperventilating. A part of her desperately wanted her overworking heart to stop, to give up, to die. She couldn't comprehend what was happening.

'You are silent,' Hannibal pointed out unnecessarily. 'Do you not feel grief for your dead son? Aren't you confused, or curious-'

Clarice was screaming again.

Her second child was a lamb with six spindly legs. It scuttled up her body and gazed at her with empty black eyes. They were huge on its tiny face.

Clarice stared back in terror. It was at her other breast. Its fore-hooves prodded the quivering teat.

'You still have not closed your legs, ex-Special Agent Starling. Do not worry about hurting the one left. I have got the last of them in my arms. I am not killing her like I killed the first one. I couldn't resist, I needed to taste flesh crafted by your blood. It was exquisite, by the way. But you need this last one. Look deep inside yourself, Clarice.' Hannibal's tone got more and more urgent and unnatural.

The insectoid lamb had started breastfeeding, but it didn't feel like breastfeeding to the mother. It felt so, so wrong. She squirmed with her paralzyed arms and bloodied face glaringly obvious. The lamb appeared to have locked itself on to her and as it suckled, trickles of blood and foamy milk bubbles ran down the sides of her soft breast.

Clarice managed to tear her eyes away from the perversion and look at her last child. Hannibal's lips were drooling lamb's blood, blood of her blood. The tiny lamb in his arms looked at her mother.

No, looked _like _her mother. The lamb had the face and hair of an exhausted, strong, but disturbed woman.

When Clarice comprehended this, she screamed. It was her loudest one yet and it crackled with panic.

The little lamb flexed its jaw and screamed right back.

The two sounded exactly the same.

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Clarice woke in an icy sweat. She burst into tears and shoved her face in her pillow, whilst rubbing her tiny baby bump.

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**So that's it. That's my first shot at making a horrofic decent enough to be published. What do you think of it? Any reviews are appreciated! Thank you for reading, and hav a nice day!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi! I've decided to make this a multi-chapter fic after all! Let's see where this goes...**

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Her baby bump was so small that it was barely noticeable, but Clarice felt eyes on her when she went jogging the next day. She had forgotten her sports bra. That did not help. Her former classmates jogged by at different paces and she had to fight the urge to hold her stomach.

'Why are people staring at us?' She couldn't stand it anymore and hissed at Ardelia. Her old roommate was wearing a matching academy sweatshirt and her hair was clipped back. Sweat glittered on her neck.

'What do you mean?' Ardelia puffed.

'Everyone is... Looking..' Clarice immediately felt foolish. 'Never mind.'

The two ran in silence. The air was uncomfortably humid. It felt like a shower room.

Clarice stared at her feet. They jogged along at a steady rhythm, leaving prints in the moist dirt and not slipping on the wet leaves. She felt her ponytail slap her neck occasionally.

It must have been something in her face; Ardelia spoke suddenly. 'You okay, Clarice?'

'Hmm? Oh, yeah.'

''Cause no one's been looking at us. Well, Jim and his goons tried to check us out again, but nothing new.'

Clarice forced a smile. 'Haha. I'm just feeling a lil' paranoid. Just a feeling.'

Ardelia didn't answer.

'It's all good!' That was a little too forceful. 'It must be the weather! Let's finish this run so we can get to the bathroom, I didn't properly brush my hair this morning. Want some gum?'

If Ardelia was still suspicious, she didn't show it. 'No, thanks. Race you?'

'Sure!' Clarice took a deep breath and sprinted ahead, calling out as she ran, 'READYSETGO!'

'Hey! That's cheating!' Her friend was left behind, but good-humored.

Starling slowed her pace when she felt the sun touch her skin. She reached a warm patch. The decrease in chill was comforting and she wiped the sweat off her forehead with her sleeve.

A classmate that Clarice was vaguely familiar with jogged by, going in the opposite direction. His eyes flickered over her body. Instinctively. There was nothing threatening or even leery about the harmless glance.

'What's your problem?!' The girl snapped at him. Her hands instinctively covered her stomach, which looked normal to the average Joe.

'Hey, easy,' he frowned and moved on, slightly picking up his pace and lowering his eyebrows.

Clarice sighed and rubbed her tummy. She felt like it had grown in the last five seconds.

Realizing that she was expecting a child hadn't been healthy for ex-Special Agent Starling. She had grown paranoid of someone finding out her secret. It wouldn't be helpful for her already sideways reputation of _white trash_, _failing agent_... _woman_.

The unavoidable fact that her body would change loomed in the back of her mind like a large spider in the attic._ I need to remember to kill that fucking spider._

She'd also showed lots of the negative symptoms of pregnancy- depression, anxiety, loss of appetite and insomnia, which worried Clarice since she was barely three months along.

Her first nightmare had happened during the night of conception. They happened once every two or three days. Clarice always woke up crying. She could not believe how twisted some of them were. The one from last night came to mind...

Just on cue, the sunlight faded.

Clarice felt a small lump grow in her throat. _No, no, you can't cry now!_

Out of the corner of her eye, Ardelia popped up around the corner. Clarice wiped the four tears that were biting her eyes away and started running again.

'Clarice, wait!'

She didn't. Ardelia and that _rubber-necker_ were friends. He'd probably told her as he passed by: "Ardie, what's with your friend? Anyone would think that she's-"

_No!_ Clarice ran faster.

She reached the building in twenty seconds and dashed inside without looking back. Once inside, Starling dodged a younger student, bumped into the wall, and cursed rabidly before stumbling into the ladies' room and locking herself in a stall.

The younger student gave it a second thought, but quickly forgot the small pandemonium.

Clarice crouched on the toilet seat, still wearing her pants. She dabbed at her eyes roughly with the thin membranes of toilet paper squares.

Technically, she wasn't even supposed to be in any of the FBI buildings. But no one tried to stop her from hanging around at the academy.

She put pressed her hands on her face, trying to calm herself down. She wasn't even sure why she was making such a big deal over anything.

_Just another one of those goddamned symptoms._ Clarice gritted her teeth.

She felt guilty for ditching her friend, but she'd rather sit whimpering in a bathroom stall than have to tell anyone that she was pregnant.

_I'll have to tell someone_ _eventually_. Clarice ran her hand through her hair and freed it from the ponytail. The tangled sheet flopped against her sweating neck and blocked ventilation. Oh well.

Sitting at her desk at home, Clarice absently drew squiggles on her wrist. The ink's odor was giving her a headache.

A sheet of paper stared blankly up at her. Starling held the pen between two fingers and swung it slowly, the tip just brushing the blue lines.

_Do I? Don't I? Do I? Don't I? Do-I-Don't-I-Do-IDon'tIDoIDon't-_

That same train of thought had stomped in her head back then when she was on the ranch.

_They're killing the lambs!_

She smacked her head in an attempt to expel the thoughts. The pen marked the paper furiously, driving its tip into scarring the paper.

_Dear Dr. Lecter,_

_I'm pregnant. Please help me._

_~Starling_

She wished that she knew his address. After some thought, the address that Benetti was investigating was added at the top.

After a bit more thought, "please help me" was whited out.

She was planning on sending it right away, before she changed her mind, but Clarice found herself flopping onto the bed and losing waking consciousness.

Her eyes twitched behind the lids; the images from melted memory and scarlet fear were already coming out to play.

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**What did you guys think?** **Please review and let me know! Thanks!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hey, everyone! What's up? Chapter Three!**

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It was only two days later when the reply came. Clarice's fingers quivered as she peeled open the envelope. She was seated on her bed in her pajamas. The sun had long bleached the windows and pointed out the dust specs. It was starting to rain.

She had not been at the academy for the last two days. Clarice felt bad for how she'd treated Ardelia, and felt she'd made it worse by giving her the cold shoulder yesterday... And today.

Her hair was not brushed and the tangles pressed against her neck. Starling focused on that detail as her hands slid the paper out of its package. It was face down. She was scared to flip it over and read it.

Taunting herself, Clarice placed the letter beside her and got up to get a drink. The floor leached the warmth from her feet.

Her kitchen was relatively clean- it had a busy feel to it and crumbs were under the table. There were probably a few mounds under fridge by now. She had the habit of kicking stuff underneath it when small motivations left her.

Clarice opened her fridge and almost grabbed the milk, but she stopped. A frequent dream she had that particularly disturbed her: milk leaking from her breasts and eventually turning to waves of blood.

'_Maybe I'll have milk a different time_,' Clarice swiped her gaze to a package of ham slices.

No, that would not do either. It looked to much like meat... '_Ham IS meat, hoetard,_' Clarice grumbled to herself. It looked too much like the meat in her dreams.

She had to have something. Clarice picked out a mini cucumber and crunched on it halfheartedly. She was almost finished when she realized that it hadn't been washed.

It wasn't fair. Clarice could remember her whole life, waking up and only recalling small fragments of dreams. Never had dreams been so vivid. Also, even her ugliest nightmares hadn't caused her to cry into her pillow and check her breasts in the mirror worriedly.

She shuffled back to the bedroom and checked the letter.

_'Dear Clarice,_

_I would say congratulations, but the erratic spikes of your handwriting and the way you stabbed the paper with each flick of your wrist suggests that you would rather not hear that._

_What have you whited out, Clarice? You have a habit of hiding what you truly want to say. You know that you can put anything you want on this letter, yet you are shy of voicing your own needs. Years of fending for your skinny self has toughened you, hasn't it? You cannot allow yourself to show any weakness, is that it?_

_Oh, well. I will humor you and pretend that you simply wrote to me to tell you of this fortune. Congratulations._

_~H_

_PS. The child will stop the screaming of the lambs, is that why you've gotten it? Or are you just bored and think that you'd be an exemplary mother?'_

Clarice's eyes sucked in the delicate black ink loops, mouthing the words. When she got to the bottom of the soft paper, she repeated her memorizing process.

Not sure what to feel, Starling flopped on her side onto the bed and rubbed her tummy. Eventually, the growing despair rang so sharply that she realized her emotion. She felt so helpless.

* * *

'Hey...' Ardelia's voice was halting on the phone.

'Hey, Ardelia,' Clarice was sitting in her armchair, hugging her knees. Her hand holding the telephone shook ever so slightly.

'What's up?'

'I'm just... I'm, um, sorry for ditching you and then pretending that you didn't exist. That was pretty bitchy of me. It won't happen again,' Clarice rocked back and forth nervously. She would punch herself in the face if she lost her best friend.

'Aw, it's cool, Clarice. Maybe we could go jogging again tomorrow?' Ardelia sounded cheerful to have heard from her.

'Yeah, I'd like that. Look... I need to tell you something,' her mouth dried up. She clenched the leather armrest and the telephone harder. Her teeth dug into her bottom lip.

'Go ahead! What's going on?' Ardelia Mapp paused. 'You don't need to worry about offending me, you know that.'

'Oh, it's not you!' again, too forceful.

'Who, then? Is Paul Krendler being a-'

'I'm pregnant, Ardelia.'

There. She'd said it. It was done. Clarice exhaled into the phone. She was startled at how sweaty the objects that she were clutching had become.

She could hear Ardelia breathing on the other end. Mapp clicked her tongue. Clarice knew that her friend was trying to think of something wise to say, and quickly.

'I-I'm coming over. Be right there,' a 'click' followed. Clarice put down the phone and felt like a large weight had lifted off her chest. She smiled wearily at her furniture.

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Clarice calmly opened the door for Ardelia when she arrived. Her old roommate's blue coat was soaked from the downpour outside.

'Great weather,' Mapp grinned morosely.

'Yeah, want some tea?'

'I'm good. What I want is for you to tell me...WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!'

Clarice blinked in a fury, crushing the tears threatening to appear '_I am not going to cry_.'

The two sat on the sofa and faced each other. Ardelia's comforting dark eyes searched Starling's, and she put her hands on Clarice's knee.

'When was this?' Ardelia spoke after a few moments of silence.

Clarice did not want to answer, she felt like she'd start crying. 'About eleven weeks ago...that party,' she croaked.

'That defense unit guy's birthday?' Ardelia referred.

'Yes...'

'What...um...happened? Have you told anyone?'

'Yeah, ah, no. Just you.' Clarice thought that once she had started talking, it'd be easy. It wasn't.

'What happened?' Ardelia repeated.

Clarice's gaze fluttered away from Mapp's. She could hear blood surging through her ears. Her hands gripped Ardelia's wrists.

'You don't have to tell me,' Ardelia sounded disappointed.

'No, no, I brought you here to tell you.'

Ardelia looked like she was trying not to sigh. 'When you're ready.'

Clarice tapped her feet on the hardwood. She squirmed on the couch cushion. The words seemed to be a weight in her stomach, with no interest of leaving her mouth and making sense of anything.

'I-I-... There were drinks,' she began.

'You were drinking?' Ardelia's tone was gentle.

'Yes. Things were getting blurry. The sounds were loud. Everything was funny.' She was painting a picture inside of her head. Omitting details on purpose, spinning the simplest story while the grand scale preformed in her memories.

She could smell the wine and the sweat and the food. The throbbing blood in her ears resembled the bass of the music.

Clarice shuddered and continued. 'I wasn't really partying much, just sitting and drinking. I didn't really know the birthday guy.'

Ardelia felt Clarice trying to tell her something. 'Who did you end up...hanging out with?'

'The people I know. Besides you.'

'Who were they, Clarice?'

Starling's eyes glittered with tears. She gently gnawed the inside of her cheek.

'Clarice?'

'I don't remember,' Clarice rasped.

'W-wh-a-?'

'I don't remember!' she burst out, feeling something inside of her stir.

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**Well that's just great...please don't be shy, drop a review! They make me happy and _maybe_**_ **I**_**'ll be nicer to Clarice. Thanks for everyone who's been reading so far!**


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